is a Japanese official and the former Executive Director of the

International Energy Agency The International Energy Agency (IEA) is a Paris-based autonomous intergovernmental organization, established in 1974, that provides policy recommendations, analysis and data on the global energy sector. The 31 member countries and 13 associatio ...

Biography

He was born on 3 March 1950 in

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. He graduated from the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

in the field of economics in 1972, and has an MBA from

Case Western Reserve University Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is a Private university, private research university in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It was established in 1967 by a merger between Western Reserve University and the Case Institute of Technology. Case ...

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

(1979). In 1973 he began his career with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI). In 1989 he joined the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; , OCDE) is an international organization, intergovernmental organization with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate economic progress and international trade, wor ...

(OECD) as the Deputy-Director for Science, Technology and Industry, and served in 1991–1995 as the Director for Science, Technology and Industry. In 1995 he returned to METI where he served as Director for Industrial Finance Division and as Director for Policy Planning and Coordination Division. In 1998–2000 he was posted at the Embassy of Japan in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, as Minister for Energy, Trade and Industry. After returning to Japan in 2000 he took a post of the Executive Vice President for the Research Institute of Economy Trade and Industry, and in 2002–2004 the post of the Director-General for the Multilateral Trade System Department of METI. From 16 August 2004 to 31 August 2007 Nobuo Tanaka was the Director for Science, Technology and Industry at the OECD, and head of the internal OECD Steering Group for the Centre for Entrepreneurship. On 1 September 2007 he succeeded Claude Mandil as the Executive Director of the IEA. On 1 September 2011, he was succeeded in this role by the Former Minister of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands, Maria van der Hoeven. Since September 2011 he is Global Associate for Energy Security and Sustainability at the Institute for Energy Economics, Japan ("Eneken") in Tokyo. He is also a professor at the Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo. He is also a fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York where he has given lectures on subjects like Post Fukushima energy policy, the Shale revolution and energy security, China energy and sustainability, and the Integral Fast Reactor during frequent weekly visits to the Columbia Morningside campus each academic semester. He is a vocal advocate for advanced nuclear energy for Japan and international cooperation between Japan and the Republic of Korea to build the first commercial Integral Fast Reactor in the world. On May 28, 2014 he hosted the ''Global Leader Program for Social Design and Management'' (GSDM) 15th Platform Seminar, The 79th Public Policy Seminar at the University of Tokyo (title: "Peaceful and Safer Use of Nuclear Power: Role of Integral Fast Reactor"). His research paper on the role of the

Integral Fast Reactor The integral fast reactor (IFR), originally the advanced liquid-metal reactor (ALMR), is a design for a nuclear reactor using fast neutrons and no neutron moderator (a "fast" reactor). IFRs can breed more fuel and are distinguished by a nuclea ...

was published in January 2017.researchgate.net
''Technical Feasibility of an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) as a Future Option for Fast Reactor Cycles''
DOI:10.3327/jaesjb.59.6_314 Nobuo Tanaka is married and has two children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tanaka, Nobuo 1950 births International Energy Agency officials Japanese diplomats Japanese economists Non-profit executives Living people University of Tokyo alumni People from Kanagawa Prefecture Academic staff of the University of Tokyo